text:
Did you know? A bicycle is a marvel of engineering efficiency, one where an investment in 22 pounds of metal and rubber boosts the efficiency of an individual mobility by a factor of three. On my bike I estimate that I get easily 7 miles per potato. For more information view the text and data in Chapter 6 of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
Chapter 5. Natural Systems Under Stress: Collapsing Fisheries
After World War II, accelerating population growth and steadily rising incomes drove the demand for seafood upward at a record pace. At the same time, advances in fishing technologies, including huge refrigerated processing ships that enabled trawlers to exploit distant oceans, enabled fishers to respond to the growing world demand.
In response, the oceanic fish catch climbed from 19 million tons in 1950 to its historic high of 93 million tons in 1997. This fivefold growth—more than double that of population during this period—raised the wild seafood supply per person worldwide from 7 kilograms (15.4 pounds) in 1950 to a peak of 17 kilograms in 1988. Since then, it has fallen to 14 kilograms. 57
As population grows and as modern food marketing systems give more people access to these products, seafood consumption is growing. Indeed, the human appetite for seafood is outgrowing the sustainable yield of oceanic fisheries. Today 75 percent of fisheries are being fished at or beyond their sustainable capacity. As a result, many are in decline and some have
collapsed. 58
While oceanic fisheries face numerous threats, it is overfishing that directly threatens their survival. Oceanic harvests expanded as new technologies evolved, ranging from sonar for tracking schools of fish to vast driftnets that are collectively long enough to circle the earth many times over.
A 2003 landmark study by a Canadian-German research team published in Nature concluded that 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans had disappeared over the last 50 years. Ransom Myers, a fisheries biologist at Canada's Dalhousie University and lead scientist in this study, says: "From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing has scoured the global ocean. There is no blue frontier left." 59
Myers goes on to say, "Since 1950, with the onset of industrialized fisheries, we have rapidly reduced the resource base to less than 10 percent—not just in some areas, not just for some stocks, but for entire communities of these large fish species from the tropics to the poles." 60
Fisheries are collapsing throughout the world. The 500-year-old cod fishery of Canada failed in the early 1990s, putting some 40,000 fishers and fish processors out of work. Fisheries off the coast of New England were not far behind. And in Europe, cod fisheries are in decline, approaching a free fall. Like the Canadian cod fishery, the European ones may have been depleted to the point of no return. Countries that fail to meet nature's deadlines for halting overfishing face fishery decline and collapse. 61
Atlantic stocks of the heavily fished bluefin tuna—a large specimen of which, headed for Tokyo's sushi restaurants, can bring in $100,000—have been cut by a staggering 94 percent. It will take years for such long-lived species to recover, even if fishing were to stop altogether. The harvest of the Caspian Sea sturgeon, source of the world's most prized caviar, fell from a record 27,700 tons in 1977 to just 461 tons in 2000. The quota for 2007 was set at 368 tons. Overfishing, much of it illegal, is primarily responsible for the dramatic drop. 62
The U.S. Chesapeake Bay, which yielded more than 35 million pounds of oysters per year a half-century ago, now produces scarcely 1 million pounds per year. A deadly combination of overharvesting, pollutants, oyster disease, and siltation from soil erosion is responsible. 63
Even among countries accustomed to working together, such as those in the European Union (EU), the challenge of negotiating catch limits at sustainable levels can be difficult. In April 1997, after prolonged negotiations, agreement was reached in Brussels to reduce the fishing capacity of EU fleets by 30 percent for endangered species, such as cod, herring, and sole in the North Sea, and by 20 percent for overfished stocks, such as cod in the Baltic Sea, the bluefin tuna, and swordfish off the Iberian Peninsula. The EU had finally reached agreement on reducing the catch but the cuts were not sufficient to arrest the decline of the region's fisheries. 64
The catch of North Sea cod, the mainstay of U.K. fisheries, fell from 300,000 tons per year in the mid-1980s to below 50,000 tons in recent years. For 2006, the annual quota was dropped to 23,000 tons, but the fishery continued to decline, leading to an additional 14 percent quota cut in 2007. The history of EU fishery management and the reduction of quotas has been a matter of too little, too late. EU officials are all too aware that Canada's vast Newfoundland cod fishery has not recovered since collapsing in 1992, despite the total ban on fishing imposed then, but even so they have consistently failed to move quickly enough. 65
When some fisheries collapse, it puts more pressure on those that remain. Local shortages quickly become global shortages. With restrictions on the catch in overfished EU waters, the heavily subsidized EU fishing fleet has turned to the west coast of Africa, buying licenses to fish off the coasts of Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Morocco, and Senegal. They are competing there with fleets from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and Taiwan. For impoverished countries like Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau, income from fishing licenses can account for up to half of government revenue. 66
Unfortunately for the Africans, their fisheries too are collapsing. In Senegal, where local fishers with small boats once could quickly fill their craft with fish, on many days now they cannot catch enough fish to cover even their fuel costs. As one Senegalese tribal elder said, "Poverty came to Senegal with these fishing agreements." 67
To the north, John Miller, reporting in the Wall Street Journal from the Mauritanian port town of Nouadhibou, describes how a 39-year-old fisherman and father of six, Sall Samba, had beached two of the three fishing boats he used to harvest octopus. "You used to be able to fish right in the port," he said, "but now the only thing you can catch here is water." 68
Overfishing is not the only threat to the world's seafood supply. Some 90 percent of fish residing in the ocean rely on coastal wetlands, mangrove swamps, or rivers as spawning areas. Well over half of the mangrove forests in tropical and subtropical countries have been lost. The disappearance of coastal wetlands in industrial countries is even greater. In Italy, whose coastal wetlands are the nurseries for many Mediterranean fisheries, the loss is a whopping 95 percent. 69
Damage to coral reefs from higher ocean temperatures and ocean acidification caused by higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, as well as damage from pollution and sedimentation, are threatening these breeding grounds for fish in tropical and subtropical waters. Between 2000 and 2004, the worldwide share of destroyed reefs, those that had lost 90 percent of live corals, expanded from 11 percent to 20 percent. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network reports that 24 percent of the remaining reefs are at risk of imminent collapse, with another 26 percent facing significant loss in the next few decades, due to mounting human pressures. As the reefs deteriorate, so do the fisheries that depend on them. 70
A World Resources Institute report on coral reefs in the Caribbean notes that 35 percent of these reefs are threatened by sewage discharge, water-based sediment, and pollution from fertilizer and that 15 percent are threatened by pollution from cruise ship discharges. In economic terms, the Caribbean coral reefs supply goods and services worth at least $3.1 billion per year. 71
The spectacular coral reefs of the Red Sea, some of the most strikingly beautiful reefs anywhere, are facing extinction due to destructive fishing practices, dredging, sedimentation, and sewage discharge. Anything that reduces sunlight penetration in the sea impairs the growth of corals, leading to die-off. 72
Pollution is taking a devastating toll, illustrated by the dead zones created by nutrient runoff from fertilizer and from sewage discharge. In the United States, the Mississippi River carries nutrients from the Corn Belt and sewage from cities along its route into the Gulf of Mexico. The nutrient surge creates huge algal blooms that then die and decompose, consuming the free oxygen in the water, leading to the death of fish. This creates a dead zone each summer in the Gulf that can reach the size of New Jersey. 73
UNEP reported in 2006 that there were more than 200 dead zones in the world's oceans and seas, up from 149 two years earlier. Among the dead zones they counted were ones in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, Ghana's Fosu Lagoon, and Uruguay's Montevideo Bay. In these oceanic "deserts" there are no fishing trawlers because there are no fish. 74
Commercial fishing is now largely an economics of today versus tomorrow. Governments are seeking to protect tomorrow's catches by forcing fishers to keep their ships idle; fishing communities are torn between the need for income today versus the future. Ironically, one reason for excess fleet capacity is long-standing government subsidized loans for investing in new boats and fishing gear. 75
The growing worldwide demand for seafood can no longer be satisfied by expanding the oceanic fish catch. If it is to be satisfied, it will be by expanding fish farming. But once fish are put in ponds or cages they have to be fed, most often corn and soybean meal, putting further pressure on land resources.
57. FAO, FISHSTAT Plus, electronic database, at www.fao.org, updated March 2007.
58. FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2006 (Rome: 2007), p. 29.
59. Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm, "Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities," Nature, vol. 432 (15 May 2003), pp. 280–83; Charles Crosby, "'Blue Frontier' is Decimated," Dalhousie News, 11 June 2003.
60. Myers and Worm, op. cit. note 59; Crosby, op. cit. note 59.
61. Myers and Worm, op. cit. note 59.
62. Stephen Leahy, "Atlantic Bluefin Going Way of Northern Cod," Interpress Service News Agency, 24 August 2007; Ted Williams, "The Last Bluefin Hunt," in Valerie Harms et al., The National Audubon Society Almanac of the Environment (New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994), p. 185; Callum Roberts, The Unnatural History of the Sea (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2007), p. 280; Konstantin Volkov, "The Caviar Game Rules," Reuters-IUCN Environmental Media Award winner, 2001; 2007 quota from UNEP, "2006 Ban on Caviar Lifted," press release (Geneva: 2 January 2007).
63. Harvests from National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Annual Commercial Landing Statistics, electronic database, at www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/commercial/ landings/annual_landings.html, updated 12 February 2007.
64. Caroline Southey, "EU Puts New Curbs on Fishing," Financial Times, 16 April 1997.
65. Alex Kirby, "UK Cod Fishing 'Could be Halted'," BBC News, 6 November 2000; ; Norway Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs, "Norway and EU Agree Fish Quotas for 2006," press release (Oslo, Norway: 2 December 2005); European Commission, "Council Decision on 2007 Fish Quotas Confirms Gradual Approach to Sustainable Fisheries," press release (Brussels: 21 December 2006); European Commission, "Outcome of the Fisheries Council of 16-20 December 2002," at ec.europa.eu/fisheries/press_corner, updated 23 December 2002; Indrani Lutchman et al., Indicators of Environmental Integration: Final Report (London: Institute for European Environmental Policy, June 2006).
66. Diadie Ba, " Senegal, EU Prepare for Fisheries Deal Tussle," Reuters, 28 May 2001; Charles Clover, The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat (London: Ebury Press, 2004), ppd. 37–46.
67. Clover, op. cit. note 66, p. 38.
68. John W. Miller, "Global Fishing Trade Depletes African Waters," Wall Street Journal, 23 July 2007.
69. Lauretta Burke et al., Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Coastal Ecosystems (Washington, DC: WRI, 2001), pp. 19, 51; coastal wetland loss in Italy from Lester R. Brown and Hal Kane, Full House (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994).
70. Clive Wilkinson, ed., Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2004 (Townsville, Australia: Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, 2004), p. 9.
71. Lauretta Burke and Jonathan Maidens, Reefs at Risk in the Caribbean (Washington, DC: WRI, 2004), pp. 12–14, 27–31.
72. Mohammed Kotb et al., "Status of Coral Reefs in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in 2004," in Wilkinson, op. cit. note 70, pp. 137–39.
73. UNEP and Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities, The State of the Marine Environment: Trends and Processes (The Hague: 2006); Nancy Rabalais and Gene Turner, "Dead Zone Size Near Top End," press release (Cocodrie, LA: Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, 28 July 2007).
74. UNEP, "Further Rise in Number of Marine 'Dead Zones'," press release (Beijing and Nairobi: 19 October 2006); UNEP, GEO Yearbook 2003 (Nairobi: 2004), p. 58.
75. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Environmental Outlook (Paris: 2001), pp. 109–20.
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text:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- Mary's Suicide was NOT My Fault
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mary's Suicide was NOT My Fault
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is ADAMANT the suicide of his wife -- Mary Richardson Kennedy -- was not his fault ... but apparently Mary's siblings aren't buying it.
During Mary's funeral -- held Saturday at St. Patrick's Church in Bedford -- RFK Jr. publicly proclaimed that a friend told him not to blame himself for Mary's death, saying, "I know I did everything I could to help her."
The memorial -- which was boycotted by Mary's 6 siblings -- came just one day after a colossal legal battle erupted between RFK Jr. and Mary's biological family -- each side wanted to claim Mary's body for burial.
RFK Jr. won the battle courtesy of a judge ... which allowed him to retrieve Mary's body from the medical examiner -- just hours before the wake.
Mary hanged herself Wednesday. She was 52.


text:
by Cwi Magen (Magerkiewicz) [Kibbutz Ginegar]
Translated by Lance Ackerfeld
My grandfather on my mother's side, Reb Nachum-Dawid Ajzenman, was a hefty
sized Jew however, he was wholeheartedly a spiritual man. And in the simple
meaning of the word was very distant from all this world's experiences,
and all his attention was to the holy books. He would always look
through them and learn from the Torah whenever he had free time. He was an
unpretentious, modest and shy man. He was simple in his ways, without
pretension or any sort of aspirations.
He made his livelihood in the slaughter house. He was a trustee and supervised the kashrut of the meat. The slaughter house in Dąbrowa was located outside of the town in Alt [old] Dąbrowa, and he had to walk a fairly long distance and pass through fields and desolate areas, walking at night, since the main part of the work was done at night.
My grandfather would get up from his bed in the middle of the night, bundle himself up in warm clothing, wrap a scarf around his neck and head and set out and more than once into a raging snow storm, and slowly walked for a long time till he reached the work place.
There was an incident, during one winter, when heavy snow covered the ground, my grandfather fell into an uncovered pit that had filled with snow. He wasn't able to extract himself and his cries continued for a long time till people came to his aid. When they pulled him out of the pit and brought him home, he was weary, despondent and aching, and in particular the terror that he had undergone during the several difficult hours that he was in the pit. After that he didn't go to work at night and continued working in the day only for many years.
My grandfather Nachum-Dawid and his slim wife Dinale, had five daughters and one son. The daughters established large families, well-known and familiar to every one in Dąbrowa. They were the Chaim Judkiewicz family; the wealthy (well-known cloth trader) Awremele Hirszberg family; the Rotsztajn family, and our family with seven children the Chaim Magerkiewicz family. The only son was Reb Mosze Ajzenman, known by his nickname Mosze Fiter [hay, fodder]. The son, like his father, was a pious Jew from the Gur Chassidim, who would assemble on Sabbaths and festivals to hear biblical discourse and partake in drinks as was the custom.
Only a few grandchildren and great grandchildren remained in Israel and the USA, from the widely branched family of Reb Nachum-Dawid. Entire families were annihilated by the Nazi enemy
My grandfather on my father's side was also a resident of Dąbrowa Reb Akiwa Magerkiewicz. He was a special kind of character. He was a cultured person with a strong will and a talent for implementation. He was a spiritual and pragmatic man in one. He had the face of a Jewish scholar. He liked music, and he himself went in front of the ark on Sabbaths and Yamim Noraim [the days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur] and even allowed one son to learn to play the violin.
In the town he was called Akiwa Melamed [Learned Akiwa]. The title Yeshiva principal was more suited to him. He never taught young children and when he taught he didn't do this for profit. He would mainly give a lesson in the yeshiva next to the Great Synagogue in Miejska Street, and yeshiva students and older adults would come to hear him.
We, his grandchildren, used to come to visit him on Sabbaths, after an afternoon nap, to tell him what we had learnt during the week in Torah and Talmud. Woe to us, if we didn't come, or if we came and weren't prepared and knew the lesson
He was a public figure, a member of the religious schools committee in the town, Yesodei Torah [The basics of the Torah], and took care of the educational side, the standards of the teachers and so on. When he entered the class as was customary of the community leaders at the time horror would grip both the students and the teachers, for fear that he perhaps would want to hear the lesson and perhaps test one of the students.
He was an activist of the Shomrei Shabbat [keepers of the Sabbath] in the town. On Sabbaths in which there were local Jewish theatrical shows, or a troupe of visiting actors had arrived, my grandfather would walk about the street in front of the Venus hall, in which the shows took place, turn around and go there and back, and the fact of his presence would turn away a lot of the audience and prevent the desecration of the Sabbath. To his credit it should be noted, that he didn't like causing scandals. He would not approach someone and preach morals. He always claimed: I still have a reverent face, and in my presence they will not transgress in public and this will be my wage for the Torah that I indoctrinated them with when they were still youths
I remember my father Chaim Magerkiewicz as a dream. He died in 1919 at
the age of 38, during a typhoid plague that broke out in the later part of
World War One. I was the fourth son from amongst seven children and I was only
six years old at the time.
[Page 565]
He was tall and slim, nimble and strong. He worked hard to make a living for
his large family. He dealt in trade and light industry, the soap industry. Both
trade and industry were at the time occupations prohibited by the
authorities, and involved a great deal danger of fines and imprisonment, and
more than once he tasted these
Because of his businesses my father would travel a lot, and when he returned from a journey, before a Sabbath or festival, he would take me for an excursion to the town in order to sort out various matters, or just to visit relatives and friends.
I was very happy about going with my father to the barber shop belong to the Feldscher (medic) Mitelman, in Stacyjna Street. His barber shop was modern clean with large mirrors on the walls and comfortable benches next to the walls. For the most part, the Jewish children of Reden would have their haircut by the limping barber, Kowza, a Gentile, a war invalid who lived with his elderly mother and many cats in a dismal shed, though very clean, and all the walls were covered with pictures of holy men and the smell of a church would permeate from every corner of the room. He would sit us, the children, to wait on a rickety bench, and precisely opposite the pictures and he also made us sit with our heads uncovered The haircut itself was quite terrible, and Kowza was particularly happy to damage the peyot [side locks] that the children asked him to not to touch
It was indeed further to get to Mitelman and the haircuts were more expensive, however we the children, were calm whilst he worked and not cowering with pain because of the nips from the machine or from the scissors
From Mitelman we would walk to the mikveh. It was very crowded on Fridays and the eves before festivals. The place was too small for the Jews of Reden, there wasn't even a single space there. Later on the town council built a modern public bathhouse and next to it, a mikveh was built for the orthodox Jews. The building was large and more spacious.
The holy Sabbath was for rest and restoring strength for the new week of traveling and efforts to earn a livelihood for the family. We would step on our tiptoes in order not to disturb father's rest .
My father was a mitzvah [a precept or commandment of the Jewish law] keeping Jew, however together with this he liked a social life, and friends would gather in our home, mainly on long winter nights, to play a game, have a political discussion or some other recreation.
My father died at an early age. He left behind a wife and small children, who grew up and became responsible and independent.
The reaper's hand destroyed most of the family. Only here and there a survivor
remained in the USA and in Israel, stubbornly continuing making an existence
and rejuvenating the family.
by Dr. Suta Trzebiner (Mitelman)
Translated by Lance Ackerfeld
The character of my father zl is intertwined in the life of the
Dąbrowa community with an unyielding knot. To be exact, two generations of
Mitelman family provided medical assistance to the Jewish population in our
My grandfather zl, Reb Mosze Mitelman, who was known in our town as Mosze Feldscher [medic], lived in the center of the town in Poprzeczna Street and later in Łukasińskiego. He passed most of the years of his life in providing medical assistance to the poor people of the town and not only to receive payment, since he also took care of supporting them with money, and more than once he inserted a sum of money under the tablecloth in the patient's room, so that that he wouldn't remain, heaven forbid, without the medicine that he had prescribed him, because of a lack of money. He once met one of his patients in the street and asked how he was and if the medicine had helped him the embarrassed patient replied that he hadn't tasted the medicine that he had prescribed him, since he didn't have with what to buy it. When Reb Mosze Mitelman heard this he didn't think for a moment, and immediately extracted a sum of money from his wallet saying: Go promptly and buy that medicine!
My father zl was also born in Dąbrowa Górnicza and lived and worked
in it all his life, and only left it on the day he made aliyah to Israel and
that was in 1957, as the last Jew from the town. As soon as he graduated he
began working in our town as the only Jewish doctor. Year upon year,
irrespective of holiday or festival, he provided assistance to anyone who
approached him. There wasn't a night in which his sleep wasn't disturbed by a
call for help to a sick person or a woman giving birth and almost every Jewish
child was born with his assistance and in his presence. He always remained with
the terminally ill to the last moment when they breathed their last (at the
request of the family).
[Page 566]
Dr. Szmuel Mitelman and his wife zl
the Jewish doctor in Dąbrowa |
My mother zl took a considerable part in this social work and was his assistant. She was active in the WIZO [Women's International Zionist Organization] she would organize fundraising evenings and collect donation. She looked after orphans, in particular the orphans of the Szapir family, one of whom survived and he lives here in Israel. In addition my father zl was also a training doctor and was allowed to give a medical certificate which allowed pioneers to make aliyah to Israel, and there are those former residents of our town here in Israel who received certificates like this 40 years ago.
During the war period, under very difficult conditions, my father zl managed to run a clinic, and he provided medical assistance to the Jews persecuted by the Nazis. For a period of time my father was sent to the camp in Annaberg, in which he risked his life to save hundreds of Zagłębie people who fell ill with typhoid and suffered from frozen limbs because of the severe cold that existed at the time during the winter. He also helped and treated Jews that he knew and those that he didn't know in the annihilation camps like Auschwitz, Oranienburg and Dachau.
Here in Israel, which he reached by various means, he didn't sit about idly and immediately began working and intensively studying the Hebrew language and succeeded in mastering it, in spite of the fact that he was elderly, over 60 years old. He worked in Kupat Cholim [Medical fund] till his last day.
On this day the third anniversary of the death of my father zl begins, and my great desire is that this pure and noble character will remain in the memory of the people of our town, who knew him. He died at the age of 70.
May his memory be blessed!
[Page 567]
by Abram Tenenbaum
Translated by Lance Ackerfeld
He came from a Chassidic family. His father Reb Joszua, or as he was known by
the people of Dąbrowa, Reb Joszua Daubenker was named after the Lithuanian
town from which he came, and was timid and a Torah scholar. He taught the
children of Reden, Chumash [one of the five books of the Pentateuch], Rashi
[paramount Bible commentator] and the Bible with a strong Lithuanian accent.
Although his Lithuanian accent made it a little difficult on the children's
comprehension, in particular when he initial period that he came to the cheder
[primary Jewish school], the children liked their teacher Reb Joszua for his
humbleness, tolerance and his speaking quietly and pleasantly. Reb Joszua ran
the cheder in his small apartment that barely was sufficient for a family of
eight. Unlike his elder brother Moti (Mordechai), who was similar in character
to his father dealt in private tutoring, and after the First World War
emigrated to America, and then came Noach.
Noach Krempel zl
a Rightist Poalei Zion activist in Dąbrowa |
Whilst Jewish youths made all kinds of considerations regarding which profession they should choose, from an economic point of view, and what work was cleaner, Noach belittled the classic Jewish professions in the Diaspora, and turned to the steel industry. He initially worked for Jakob Gutman in Będzin, and later on with the Klajn brothers in Dąbrowa, where he became familiar with and learned from up close the struggle of the laborer and his difficulties.
In the beginning his organizational affiliation was to Bund [Jewish socialist party] but he soon changed to P. Z. [Poalei Zion Laborers of Zion] , Tz. S. [Tzionim Socialistim Socialist Zionist] and within a short time became one of the prominent members of the party.
The Bund didn't supply an answer to nationalist questions. Noach did not adhere to a routine. He strove for the truth the whole truth. He was unswerving and stubborn, he didn't flatter and he didn't pretend. Working together with him was not an easy task. I remember the prolonged meetings of the party executive, which sometimes continued on to the small hours of the night. Noach refused to stop till the last item of the agenda was done. After the meeting, he didn't leave till he had reviewed an additional time with everyone about upcoming activities. These were issues that weren't within the scope of his position, but a feeling of responsibility always hung over him.
He carried a deep concern in his heart. He was concerned about the movement. He was absolutely serious and didn't allow himself to be carefree. He was opposed to receptions, festivities and party excursions. He saw this as a sign of deterioration, a waste of time. He was strict and chastising, he spoke fervently at meetings, excitedly and with all his heart. He achieved respect and admiration in the party and outside of it.
In 1929 during the crisis in the land of Israel he stood up and made aliyah, however he did not break ties with the party. He didn't conceal from us his difficulties in acclimatizing to the arduous conditions in the country, and the backbreaking work that ruined his health in drying up the swamps and in excavations.
His scanty hut, in which he lived during the first years of his arriving in the country and in which his only daughter, Ora, was born, served as the first stop for new immigrants from Dąbrowa.
Together with his wife Rachel, long may she live, they received each new
immigrant from Dąbrowa with warmth and a friendly welcome. He took care of
their first arrangements, helped them with advice and training and real
assistance. He provided bank endorsement in order that unemployed people from
our town could receive loans. And if the borrowers weren't able to repay the
Noach would come to the bank to receive his paltry wage, and the
bank would take hold the money for the endorsement
[Page 568]
Noach was not bitter. He showed restraint over the deprivation and distress. He
was like a good brother participating in the sorrow of friends and encouraging
After the Holocaust, Noach was amongst the founders of the Dąbrowa Organization and its activities. He dedicated himself to this task with passion and commitment.
In the last years, till illness overcame him and he felt an approaching danger, he was alert and eager as previously, he would take interest in every Dąbrowa survivor, Noach was like an older brother to us.
May his memory be blessed.
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for verification.
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text:
Of Government, Banks and Corporations
The current financial times bring much distrust of government and its relations with banks and corporations.  And for good reason.  Government is but a tool for them. This is nothing new, nor is the recent bail-out anything new.
Thomas Jefferson and William Giles had something to say on the topic in the 1820's, when John Adams was U.S. Secretary of State and setting his eyes on the Presidency.  Giles wrote a letter to the American people.  In it, he noted that Adams was corrupt.  He stated how Adams took $100,000 of the Treasury's money and deposited it with Metropolis Bank, a local bank in which Adams sat on the board of directors.
Giles wrote:
Now, I would ask, with what propriety, or from what motive, the Secretary of State recently drew about 100,000 dollars out of the public treasury – or, what is the same thing, out of the Branch Bank at Washington, where the money was deposited to the credit of the Treasurer of the United States – and placed it in the Bank of the Metropolis?  …. But why, it will be asked, should the Secretary of State be thus friendly disposed to the Bank of Metropolis?  I answer – he has been a dealer in stocks in the local banks, and is now, and has for some time, been a Director in the Bank of the Metropolis.
…. Indeed it is a solemn fact and, upon record that the public treasure of the nation does some how or another, find its way into almost every local banking institution, and many of them rotten to the core, where individual public agents happen to be either Presidents, Directors, or Stockholders; or connected with said Presidents, Directors and Stockholders of said institutions.
Jefferson subsequently wrote in a letter to Giles:
You ask my opinion of the propriety of giving publicity to what is stated in your letter, as having passed between Mr. John Q. Adams and yourself. Of this no one can judge but yourself. It is one of those questions which belong to the forum of feeling. This alone can decide on the degree of confidence implied in the disclosure; whether under no circumstances it was to be communicated to others? It does not seem to be of that character, or at all to wear that aspect. They are historical facts which belong to the present, as well as future times. I doubt whether a single fact, known to the world, will carry as clear conviction to it, of the correctness of our knowledge of the treasonable views of the federal party of that day, as that disclosed by this, the most nefarious and daring attempt to dissever the Union, of which the Hartford convention was a subsequent chapter; and both of these having failed, consolidation becomes the fourth chapter of the next book of their history. But this opens with a vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who, having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76, now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry. This will be to them a next best blessing to the monarchy of their first aim, and perhaps the surest stepping-stone to it.
If Jefferson is contrasting "the feelings or principles of '76" with "a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations," then, we might as well ask what were "the feelings or principles of '76?" It seems Jefferson is saying that the feelings and principles of '76 were a common desire during the founding generation to limit the influence of aristocracy, banks and powerful corporations.  It seems that Jefferson, at least as he recalls those feelings and principles, was acknowledging the existence of a "class warfare" that current Republicans now deride. His concern was that the nation was headed in the direction of an aristocracy which would be "riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry." Under Jefferson's view, the class war was being waged from the top-down, where the aristocracy aimed to ride rough-shod over the working class.
Aside from the "class-envious" liberals out there and a handful of libertarian-minded people who oppose a national state of oligarchy by powerful banks and corporations, are there any feelings or principles of '76 held by the right? Consider some of the ideas Jefferson expressed as to how to deal with this problem in a letter he wrote to James Madison in 1785:
The property of this country [France] is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year downwards. These employ the flower of the country as servants, some of them having as many as 200 domestics, not laboring. They employ also a great number of manufacturers and tradesmen, and lastly the class of laboring husbandmen. But after all there comes the most numerous of all classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I asked myself what could be the reason so many should be permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated lands? These lands are undisturbed only for the sake of game. It should seem then that it must be because of the enormous wealth of the proprietors which places them above attention to the increase of their revenues by permitting these lands to be labored. I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree, is a politic measure and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment, but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.
Does the above writing sound like someone who is all too concerned with protecting the private property rights of Goldman-Sachs?  Perhaps when Jefferson writes elsewhere about the importance of private property, he is talking about the property rights of those people who he referred to above as "the most precious part of a state."
In summary, when looking back to Jefferson and the principles of '76, it would help to properly frame history as it actually existed.  Our founders did not go to war to preserve the sacred property rights of an aristocracy.  They went to war to crush the aristocracy and its miserable influence.  Now, here we are, 235 years later, and we have an aristocracy that has grown so large in size and influence, that it has the power to collapse the economies of the entire world and wreak havoc all throughout the middle classes.  Give that some thought…
Jeff Matthews [send him email] is a practicing attorney in Houston. He graduated from the University of Texas, School of Law in 1993 and was licensed that year.
Copyright © 2011 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit to the author and this website is given.


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Category Main Page Articles & Reviews
Main Nibbles
Main Page Articles & Reviews Of Fine Foods From A To Z
Product Reviews
Main Page
Foods, Beverages, Books, News & More
October 2007 Last Updated February 2012
This is Page 5 of a five-page article on pasta origin; here, the mainstreaming of pasta in America. Click on the black links below to visit other pages.
Although hundreds of small pasta factories opened in America's Little Italys, Italians preferred to buy imported pasta, however expensive, because it was made from durum wheat. (American farmers did not grow durum until the 20th century.)
It's easy to chart the subsequent quick growth of pasta. Some highlights:
And today durum wheat is a huge American crop: More than 100 million bushels are produced annually, largely in North Dakota.
According to the National Pasta Association, America manufactures more pasta than any other country in the world—more than five billion pounds a year. In 2000, five billion pounds of pasta were produced: 4.5 billion in dry pasta and .5 billion in frozen and fresh pasta.
In terms of being an "American" food: macaroni and cheese made the list of the top 10 foods of the century, according to an article in the Sacramento Bee that polled authorities on the foods most representative of American cooking in the 1900s³.
Spaghetti and meatballs did not make the list.
³The ten top foods are apple pie, barbecue, chili, chocolate chip cookies, fried chicken, hamburger/cheeseburger, Jell-O, macaroni and cheese, pancakes and pizza.
Go To The Article Index Above
Content copyright © 2005-
© Copyright 2005-2024 Lifestyle Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. All images are copyrighted to their respective owners.


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DAVIS, SILVANUS (Sylvanus), land-agent and speculator, coastal trader, militia captain, and commander of Fort Loyal at Falmouth (Portland, Me.); b. c. 1635; d. 19 April 1703 (o.s.) in Hull (Nantasket, Mass.).
Davis' origins and early history are obscure. From 1659 on he acquired lands in Maine on the Damariscotta, the Kennebec and nearby rivers, and on Casco Bay; his trading activities with the Indians, the settlers, and also the French date from this period. In the early 1680s he moved from the Kennebec to Falmouth, where he was a leading landowner and businessman, operator of a sawmill, a grist-mill, and a store, while carrying on his coastal trade. In 1686 he was made a justice of the peace, and in 1691 he became one of the representatives of Maine in the Massachusetts Council.
A militia captain in King Philip's War, Davis continued his military activities after his move to Falmouth, commanding Fort Loyal, the principal English strong point on Casco Bay; he held this post in 1689 and again in May 1690, when the fort's new commander withdrew to Boston for aid as a large force of French and Indians under the command of René Robinau de Portneuf and Augustin Le Gardeur de Courtemanche approached. The attack, one of Buade* de Frontenac's planned strikes against the English colonies, began on 16 May (26 May, n.s.). On 20 May, after a siege of five days, Fort Loyal surrendered; Davis was one of the few to survive the massacre which followed. He was fairly well treated on the long journey to the St Lawrence, and had considerable freedom during his four months in Quebec. He was there throughout the unsuccessful siege by the Phips* expedition, and was one of the prisoners exchanged for Phips's French captives when the fleet withdrew in October 1690. On his return Captain Davis wrote an account of the fall of Fort Loyal, of his conversation with Frontenac, and of his experiences and impressions during the siege.
Later in the 1690s he moved to Massachusetts, retaining some of his interests in Maine, and settled finally in Hull, where he remained until his death in 1703. A man of energy and enterprise, ambitious, a shrewd businessman, Davis was also an experienced Indian fighter, a good disciplinarian, and a courageous commander.
["Mass. Archives," XXXVI, 72, 73. Suffolk County Court House (Boston, Mass.), Registry of Probate, 2806. Documentary hist. of Maine, IV, 390, 459–63; V, 7, 8, 10, 11, 95–96; VI; VII, 358. "Provincial charter of 1691, October 7, 1691," in Trans., 1913–14 (Col. Soc. Mass. pub., XVII, Boston, 1915), 35, 38, 39n. Vital records of Hull, Mass. to the year 1850, comp. T. W. Baldwin (Boston, 1911), 65.
Valuable evidence of Davis' contacts with French traders can be found in [Henri Brunet], "Letters of an Acadian trader, 1674–1676" ed. L.-A. Vigneras, New Eng. Q., XIII (March 1940), 98–110. There are a number of contemporary or nearly contemporary accounts of the siege and fall of Fort Loyal, both from French and from English sources. There is some disagreement on details such as the dates, the use by Portneuf of conventional methods of siege warfare, what French and Indian leaders were present, whether or in what manner a pledge of protection was given to the inhabitants when the fort surrendered, and their subsequent treatment. Later historians reflect to some extent these differences in the early sources. A detailed, emotional account from the English side was written by Davis himself after his return from captivity, "Declaration of Sylvanus Davis inhabitant of the town of Falmouth in the province of Maine, in New England, concerning the cruel, treacherous and barbarous management of a war against the English in the eastern parts of New England by the cruel Indians . . . ," Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 3d ser., I (1825), 101–12; see also: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, II, 523–25. For the French version of the attack see Monseignat's account in AN, Col., C11A, II (printed in Coll. de manuscrits relatifs a la N.-F., I, 498–99 and in NYCD (O'Callaghan and Fernow), IX, 472–73); Monseignat refers to Davis as "Denis." See also: La Potherie, Histoire (1722), III, 76–81; Le Clercq, First establishment of the faith (Shea), 11, 293ff.; Charlevoix, History (Shea), II, 132–37. Later accounts include J. T. Hull, The siege and capture of Fort Loyall . . . 1690 (o.s.) (Portland, Me., 1885), 24–67, 69ff.; Parkman, Count Frontenac and New France (1891), 228–31; Eccles, Frontenac, 225–27. For the fullest treatment of Davis' experiences as a prisoner in Quebec and the details of his exchange, including his own story, see: 1690, Sir William Phips devant Québec (Myrand).
The following sources were also found useful for the life of Davis: C. J. Binney, "New England genealogies," I, 39, 39a–e (this work is a manuscript collection of genealogical material in the library of the New Eng. Hist. and Geneal. Soc.). Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass.-bay (Mayo), I, 293–94. Genealogical dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, ed. Sybil Noyes et al. (Portland, Me., 1928–39). W. D. Spencer, Maine immortals (Augusta, Me., 1932), 89–98. a.r.s.]
© 1969–2024 University of Toronto/Université Laval
Cite This Article
Alice R. Stewart, "DAVIS, SILVANUS," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 2, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 22, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/davis_silvanus_2E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
Permalink: | http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/davis_silvanus_2E.html |
Author of Article: | Alice R. Stewart |
Title of Article: | DAVIS, SILVANUS |
Publication Name: | Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 2 |
Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
Year of publication: | 1969 |
Year of revision: | 1982 |
Access Date: | February 22, 2024 |


text:
Washington • Law enforcement officials became so concerned by President Donald Trump's behavior in the days after he fired FBI Director James Comey that they began investigating whether he had been working for Russia against U.S. interests, The New York Times reported.
The report Friday cites unnamed former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.
The inquiry forced counterintelligence investigators to evaluate whether Trump was a potential threat to national security, and they also sought to determine whether Trump was deliberately working for Russia or had unintentionally been influenced by Moscow.
The Times reports that FBI agents and some top officials became suspicious of Trump's ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign but didn't launch an investigation at that time because they weren't sure how to approach such a sensitive and important probe, according to the sources. But Trump's behavior in the days around Comey's May 2017 firing, specifically two instances in which he seemed to tie Comey's ousting to the Russia investigation, helped trigger the counterintelligence part of the investigation, according to the newspaper.
Trump tweeted early Saturday that the report showed that the FBI leadership "opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof" after he had fired Comey.
Robert Mueller took over the investigation when he was appointed special counsel soon after Comey's firing. The overall investigation is looking into Russian election interference and whether Trump's campaign coordinated with the Russians. The Times says it's unclear whether Mueller is still pursuing the counterintelligence angle.
Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani told the Times that he had no knowledge of the inquiry but said that since it was opened a year and a half ago and they hadn't heard anything, apparently "they found nothing." Trump has also repeatedly and vociferously denied collusion with the Russians.


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SPGen is a simple Windows application which can generate the TSQL code for an INSERT or UPDATE Microsoft SQL Stored Procedures. Point it at a table, click the generate button and the code is generated for you.
The article covers some basic SQLDMO (SQL Database Management Object) methods and provides a slim .NET wrapper class around SQLDMO to help you in using SQLDMO.
1. A screenshot of SPGen in action with a generated Stored Procedure in the main text box
Writing the basics of Stored Procedures is mind numbing at best, even for DBAs. Megan Forbes, myself and a few others got into a heated rant about Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Manager and it's extreme lack of SP tools and management. I decided to write a very simple app which takes away the drudge of typing in all the base code for an SP. When you are faced with a table of 50 fields and the need to create a simple UPDATE or INSERT SP, declaring all those parameters can be akin to agreeing to be the designated driver for the office Christmas party, i.e. deadly boring.
Extract the downloaded demo zip, or re-compile the project, and run the executable.
That is the extent of SPGen's functionality. You can generate SPs for other Tables, without having to re-connect, or you can connect to another SQL Server and generate SPs for that.
SQLDMOHelper is a simple class which returns basic information about a SQL Server to the caller. Really it just wraps up the common methods I needed from SQLDMO into easy to use .NET methods which return easily usable data. To this end it only returns data and does not provide any methods to save changes to a SQL Server, yet.
Using SQLDMO in your .NET app is actually very simple. All you need to do is add a reference to the Microsoft SQLDMO Object Library COM object in your project. You can then utilise SQLDMO methods with the interopped SQLDMO namespace. All very simple thanks to .NET.
public Array RegisteredServers
This property returns a one-dimensional string array containing the names of all registered SQL Servers in the local domain.
SQLDMO provides a class called ApplicationClass which you can use to gather this list, like so;
ArrayList aServers = new ArrayList(); SQLDMO.ApplicationClass acServers = new SQLDMO.ApplicationClass(); for (int iServerGroupCount = 1; iServerGroupCount <= acServers.ServerGroups.Count; iServerGroupCount++) for (int iServerCount = 1; iServerCount <= acServers.ServerGroups.Item( iServerGroupCount).RegisteredServers.Count; iServerCount++) aServers.Add(acServers.ServerGroups.Item (iServerGroupCount).RegisteredServers.Item(iServerCount).Name); return aServers.ToArray();
Quite simply a new instance of ApplicationClass is created. Then a for loop runs through each ServerGroups returned and then in the second for loop adds each RegisteredServer name to the aServers ArrayList. aServers is then returned to the caller to be consumed.
ArrayList really makes working with un-known length arrays very easy. You can basically redimension the array on the fly and then once you are finished use the ToArray method to return a valid Array.
public Array Databases
Databases is a property which returns, as the name suggest, a one-dimensional string array of all Databases in a specified SQL Server.
ArrayList aDatabases = new ArrayList(); foreach(SQLDMO.Database dbCurrent in Connection.Databases) aDatabases.Add(dbCurrent.Name); return aDatabases.ToArray();
A simple foreach loop is run against the SQLDMO.Databases collection which is returned from Connection.Databases.
Connection is a property of SQLDMOHelper which provides a SQLDMO Server connection. You need to use the Connect method to set the Connection property up. Also remember to use the DisConnect method to, wait for it, disconnect the connection.
Databases then returns the string array of Database names for your app to use.
public Array Tables
Looks familiar, doesn't it? It is. The Tables property returns a one-dimensional string array of all Table names in a specified Database.
ArrayList aTables = new ArrayList(); SQLDMO.Database dbCurrent = (SQLDMO.Database)Connection.Databases.Item( this.Database, Connection); foreach(SQLDMO.Table tblCurrent in dbCurrent.Tables) aTables.Add(tblCurrent.Name); return aTables.ToArray();
public SQLDMO.Columns Fields
The Fields property however is a bit different. Instead of returning a one-dimensional string array it returns a SQLDMO.Columns collection which provides a full range of details on all columns (fields) within a table.
The code though is even simpler than before as we are really just returning what SQLDMO provides and not translating it at all:
SQLDMO.Database dbCurrent = (SQLDMO.Database) Connection.Databases.Item(this.Database, Connection); SQLDMO.Table tblCurrent = (SQLDMO.Table) dbCurrent.Tables.Item(this.Table, Connection); return tblCurrent.Columns;
Columns is a collection of SQLDMO.Column objects which contain various properties and methods for working on a field in a table. In SPGen only Name, DataType and Length are used, but there are many more.
string ServerName
These four properties of SQLDMOHelper are simply strings which hold what SQL Server, user name, password, database and table respectively the methods of SQLDMOHelper should work on. For instance Databases requires just ServerName, UserName and Password to be filled in to work. To use Fields though you also need Database and Table filled in so that Fields knows what to work on.
The StoredProcedure class provides just one method at the moment, Generate. This, finally, is the heart of SPGen and provides the functionality for returning valid Stored Procedure code.
public string Generate
StoredProcedureTypes sptypeGenerate
SQLDMO.Columns colsFields
string sTableName
The code within Generate is pretty straight forward and consists largely of a StringBuilder being used to construct the Stored Procedure. On that note I found the AppendFormat method of StrinbBuilder to be highly effective for this kind of work.
Take this code for instance: sParamDeclaration.AppendFormat(" @{0} {1}", new string[]{colCurrent.Name, colCurrent.Datatype});. Without the AppendFormat method one would have to do the following: sParamDeclaration += " @" + colCurrent.Name + " " + colCurrent.Datatype; This latter way is terrible to debug and hard to understand when there is a whole page of similar code. The format functionality of StringBuilder (and just String itself) makes for much more manageable and understandable string manipulation.
sParamDeclaration.AppendFormat(" @{0} {1}", new string[]{colCurrent.Name, colCurrent.Datatype});
sParamDeclaration += " @" + colCurrent.Name + " " + colCurrent.Datatype;
StringBuilder also is faster than using sSample += "Not in kansas, " + sName + ", anymore";, especially when performing many string appends. Thanks to Tom Archer's fantastic sample chapter on using String in .NET, I certainly learnt a lot from it.
sSample += "Not in kansas, " + sName + ", anymore";
One other slight item of interest in the Generate method is this:
if ( colCurrent.Datatype == "binary" || colCurrent.Datatype == "char" || colCurrent.Datatype == "nchar" || colCurrent.Datatype == "nvarchar" || colCurrent.Datatype == "varbinary" || colCurrent.Datatype == "varchar") sParamDeclaration.AppendFormat("({0})", colCurrent.Length);
Basically in TSQL you must only declare the length of a parametre if it is one of the above data types. If you for instance try @NameFirst int(4) in TSQL you will get back an error as you may not declare the length of an int data type. At present I know of no way to programatically detect which data types must and must not have length declarations, therefore I have used the cumbersome if block you see above. I was hoping that SqlDbType would provide the neccesary information, but it does not, rendering it slightly less useful.
@NameFirst int(4)
Apart from the the method is as stated mainly a big string manipulation method which takes in the provided fields, loops through them and returns a Stored Procedure of the type specified.
As I find more areas to automate in regards to Stored Procedures I hope to add new methods and helpers to this class.
There is not much more to say or explain about SPGen, it really is a simple app. However following are two basically unrelated but still interesting titbits that you may find useful.
I have finally found a use for the app.config file beyond the usual. With SPGen you can open up app.config and modify the ServerName, UserName and Password application keys. SPGen will then read them in when the app starts and pre-fill the fields for you. This way if you have an often used SQL Server you can just fire up SPGen and hit connect without having to re-type the details in each time.
Obviously you want to be careful with the Password key especially, but I put it in with full confidence nobody would let their app.config file go wandering.
Code wise it is really quite simple:
NameValueCollection settingsAppSettings = (NameValueCollection)ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings; if (settingsAppSettings["ServerName"] != null && settingsAppSettings["ServerName"] != "") { selServers.Text = settingsAppSettings["ServerName"]; dmoMain.ServerName = settingsAppSettings["ServerName"]; }
First I create a NameValueCollection collection, simply to make working with the configuration settings easier (i.e. instead of having to type ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["key"] each time.) Then the code checks if there is a specified key value (I did not want the "Select Server" message being removed when there was no value) and then it sets the input field up to the value.
Nothing fancy, but it gives SPGen a small measure of customisation and gives your fingers a rest. By the way, on release build of SPGen app.config is automatically renamed to SPGen.exe.config, that is the file you need to edit to put in your SQL Server details.
The PasswordChar property of the TextBox is pretty simple. You give it a char value that you want displayed instead of the actual text, e.g. *.
However, what if you want to reset that same TextBox so that it no longer masks the input? In SPGen I needed to do this as I, maybe wrongly, did not include labels for my input fields. MSDN provides a clue, but does not go on to show you exactly how. After a bit of stumbling around I figured it out;
char chResetPassword = (char)0; txtPassword.PasswordChar = chResetPassword;
So you create a char of 0 (zero) and then assign that to the PasswordChar property.
It is quite obvious once you figure it out, but can be annoying before that.
Stored Procedures are very powerful but can be a tedious affair when multiple parameteres are required. Used in conjunction with Llewellyn Pritchard's DBHelper app though, you will have an end-to-end solution to working with Stored Procedures in an easy and fast manner.
SQLDMO is also a useful means of discovering and exploring SQL Servers and Databases. The main problem, in a .NET environment though, is that SQLDMO must be used through COM Interop, which is not an optimum situation. Hopefully in the near future a .NET SQLDMO will be released (though if you care to shed some light on how SQLDMO works I would be happy to write my own SQLDMO.NET class.)
If you have any ideas as to how to improve the app then please speak up.
This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The MIT License
mrob1 wrote:'System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings'
mrob1 wrote:System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings'
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
CREATE PROCEDURE Audits_DELETE @AuditID int AS DELETE FROM [Audits] WHERE AuditID = @AuditID GO
TreeNode treenodeTableDelete = new TreeNode("DELETE Stored Procedure", 2, 2); treenodeTable.Nodes.Add(treenodeTableDelete);
// i found it simpler to replace the switch statement with a regex and enum parse string query_type = Regex.Match(tnodeSelected.Text, @"\w+").Groups[0].Captures[0].Value; StoredProcedureTypes spType = (StoredProcedureTypes)Enum.Parse(typeof(StoredProcedureTypes), query_type);
using System; using System.Text; namespace Bluegrass.Data { ///  /// Supported Stored Procedure types ///  public enum StoredProcedureTypes { UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE } ///  /// Stored Procedure Helper class ///  public class StoredProcedure { ///  /// Generates code for an UPDATE or INSERT Stored Procedure ///  public string Generate(StoredProcedureTypes sptypeGenerate, SQLDMO.Columns colsFields, string sTableName) { StringBuilder sGeneratedCode = new StringBuilder(); StringBuilder sParamDeclaration = new StringBuilder(); StringBuilder sBody = new StringBuilder(); StringBuilder sINSERTValues = new StringBuilder(); // Setup SP code, begining is the same no matter the type sGeneratedCode.AppendFormat("CREATE PROCEDURE {0}_{1}", new string[]{sTableName, sptypeGenerate.ToString()}); sGeneratedCode.Append(Environment.NewLine); // Setup body code, different for UPDATE and INSERT switch (sptypeGenerate) { case StoredProcedureTypes.INSERT: sBody.AppendFormat("INSERT INTO [{0}] (", sTableName); sBody.Append(Environment.NewLine); sINSERTValues.Append("VALUES ("); sINSERTValues.Append(Environment.NewLine); break; case StoredProcedureTypes.UPDATE: sBody.AppendFormat("UPDATE [{0}]", sTableName); sBody.Append(Environment.NewLine); sBody.Append("SET"); sBody.Append(Environment.NewLine); break; case StoredProcedureTypes.DELETE: sBody.AppendFormat("DELETE FROM [{0}] ", sTableName); sBody.Append(Environment.NewLine); sBody.Append("WHERE"); break; } foreach (SQLDMO.Column colCurrent in colsFields) { // only list identity columns for delete statements if(sptypeGenerate == StoredProcedureTypes.DELETE && !colCurrent.Identity) continue; // Param Declaration construction sParamDeclaration.AppendFormat(" @{0} {1}", new string[]{colCurrent.Name, colCurrent.Datatype}); // Only binary, char, nchar, nvarchar, varbinary and varchar may have their length declared if ( colCurrent.Datatype == "binary" || colCurrent.Datatype == "char" || colCurrent.Datatype == "nchar" || colCurrent.Datatype == "nvarchar" || colCurrent.Datatype == "varbinary" || colCurrent.Datatype == "varchar") sParamDeclaration.AppendFormat("({0})", colCurrent.Length); sParamDeclaration.Append(","); sParamDeclaration.Append(Environment.NewLine); // Body construction, different for INSERT and UPDATE switch (sptypeGenerate) { case StoredProcedureTypes.INSERT: sINSERTValues.AppendFormat(" @{0},", colCurrent.Name); sINSERTValues.Append(Environment.NewLine); sBody.AppendFormat(" {0},", colCurrent.Name); sBody.Append(Environment.NewLine); break; case StoredProcedureTypes.UPDATE: case StoredProcedureTypes.DELETE: sBody.AppendFormat(" {0} = @{0},", new string[]{colCurrent.Name, }); sBody.Append(Environment.NewLine); break; } } // Now stitch the body parts together into the SP whole sGeneratedCode.Append(sParamDeclaration.Remove(sParamDeclaration.Length - 3, 3)); sGeneratedCode.Append(Environment.NewLine); sGeneratedCode.Append("AS"); sGeneratedCode.Append(Environment.NewLine); sGeneratedCode.Append(sBody.Remove(sBody.Length -3, 3)); if (sptypeGenerate == StoredProcedureTypes.INSERT) { sGeneratedCode.Append(")"); sGeneratedCode.Append(Environment.NewLine); sGeneratedCode.Append(sINSERTValues.Remove(sINSERTValues.Length - 3, 3)); sGeneratedCode.Append(")"); } sGeneratedCode.Append(Environment.NewLine); sGeneratedCode.Append("GO"); return sGeneratedCode.ToString(); } } }
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If you thought day one's show floor highlights were all-encompassing, wait till you see day two's selection of amazing gear and rockstar encounters…
Day two...
VIDEO: Paul Gilbert's new Ibanez Fireman and PGM signature models
The super-nice guitarist talked through these in person before taking the stage
Pearl Demon Drive pedal, DW Eco X drumkit, Roland TD4 and Meinl's latest cymbals
Rhythm magazine took and whirlwind tour around Drumville for these top picks
Waves Signature plug-in series
The Tony Maserati Collection, the ACG guitar plug-in and the Live division
Marshall MG4, Mesa Boogie Mark V and Electradyne, Bogner Goldfinger and AttiTube G20
Guitarist magazine gushes over this impressive array of amplifiers
VIDEO: More love for AmpliTude Fender
Our guys took the '57 Deluxe, '65 Twin Reverb and Super Sonic setting for a test drive
Tama Starclassic LU kit in magnetic orange finish
The LU stands for Lars Ulrich and this is one cool-looking set-up
VIDEO: Mapex Meridian Birch kit
A brand new range demoed by none-other than Greg Bissonette. Yes, he survived Spinal Tap!
Arturia Minimoog V
A software update might sound boring, but we guarantee the new Sound Map feature will blow you away
Gibson Custom Inspired By models and 50th Anniversary '59 Les Paul
A Robby Krieger SG, Jeff Beck Les Paul and Jimmy Page's Les Paul head!
Marshall MG Series and Guthrie Govan signature Suhr guitar
Guitar Techniques magazine talks classic rock
From the basement…
Brian Wilson plays California Girls (WARNING: you will wish you were there)


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You will need:
needle and thread
2 felt (or fleece) circles, about 3/4 inch in diameter
A button
A strip of fabric that's about 2 inches by 30 inches long*
Bobby pin or other hair clip
*Option: if you don't want a frayed edge, your strip of fabric should be about 4 inches by 30 inches long
1. Thread your needle. Insert it on one end of fabric strip, then make a "running stitch" along one of the fabric strip's long ends, going in and out of the fabric every 1/4 inch or so.
2. Once you've stitched all the way to the end, pull the thread so the fabric bunches up near the knot. Tie a knot to hold the bunching in place, but don't cut the thread yet.
3. Sew together the two short ends of the fabric strip with the right sides of the facing each other so that your "circle" is closed. Knot and cut the thread.
This is what your flower should look like now:
4. Hold one felt dot in the center of the front of the flower and the other dot directly behind it on the back side of the flower, sandwiching the bunched-up part of the fabric flower inside the two felt dots. The felt dots are basically going to hide the messy part of the flower where your running stitch is.
Thread your needle with thread that matches the dots. Stitch through all layers, making your way around the dots. Knot and cut the thread.
5. Thread a needle with thread that matches your button. Sew the button to the front of the flower, starting with your needle coming up through the back side. Knot and cut thread.
6. Sew a bobby pin or other clip to the felt dot on the back side of the flower.
7. Put the flower in your hair and feel this fabulous:
*The flowers you see above have raw edges, so they will fray. I'm kind of on a fray kick right now, so I'm cool with that.
But if you want your flowers to have a more finished look, cut your fabric strip twice as wide as you want the finished flower to be. Then, before you begin your running stitch, fold it in half lengthwise so the two long raw edges are together (wrong sides facing). Then do your running stitch through the two layers of fabric and all your messy raw edges will be in one place--tucked underneath the felt dots eventually.
This fairgoer made it that way and I thought it came out great:
Another alternative is to make two flowers, one slightly larger than the other, and then layer them on top of each other before you sandwich them in between the felt dots. That's what I did here:


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Remarketing Strategies for the Holiday Season
Let's face it – people just go crazy during the holidays. Your CPCs will increase, but so will your click-through-rates, and your cost per action should even go down even through your CPCs have increased.
It's an insane time full of people who want to find deals. Marketers are willing to oblige and throw offers and discounts at shoppers. It's party time for the credit cards.
It's also a time to break many of your tried and true marketing rules, and your remarketing campaigns are no different. Today, we'll examine a method for setting up and executing holiday remarketing campaigns.
Collect All the Cookies You Can
I've written previously about how to segment your remarketing campaigns so that your ads are always reflective of the visitor's behavior on your site. While that strategy works throughout the year – either don't use it, or add this strategy to it during the holiday season.
This is not the time to start overly segmenting your visitors or letting your remarketing cookies expire. If you segment too heavily, then you have locked a consumer into a certain set of ads. During the holidays we aren't looking for ourselves – we're shopping for others. Therefore, interests change as often as the Christmas tree lights burnout.
You can either create new lists that are just for the holidays with long cookie durations, or you can increase the length of your current cookies. If you're the planning type, I'd suggest making new lists so that you do not have to remember how you've affected your current lists after the holidays.
Now, put everyone in this list. Yes, everyone. Those who shopped, abandoned their carts, or checked out. You might not even think of this as a remarketing list; but as another type of targeted display advertising.
During the normal year, you might exclude those who converted from seeing your ads immediately after the conversion event. However, if someone checked out on your site and had a good experience, when they need something else (and we all need something else during the holidays), then your ad is a reminder to come back to buy from you yet again.
Set as many cookies as you can to increase your shopper list size.
Create Ads by Holiday Deadlines
Next, create a list of holiday segmentations based upon your offers and limitations. For each time frame, think about your offers and benefits for that timeframe.
For instance:
- Black Friday / Cyber Monday – deep discounts
- From Cyber Monday for two weeks – typical discounts for the holidays
- Two weeks before the Holidays – Free shipping until December 24th
- One week before the holiday – last chance to order for Christmas Eve delivery
- The day before the holiday – forgot to order something? Buy a digital giftcard.
- Post-holiday – After Holiday Sales Special
- etc…
This is a very generic list. Take a look at your marketing efforts, offline material, previous holiday offers, and write something that is much more geared towards your business.
Just remember these two facts:
- The closer it gets to the holiday, the more 'good enough' suffices
- During holiday seasons, the benefits should be for the product buyer, not the product user
Submit All Your Ads Now
Once you have your timeframes created, write ads for each timeframe. Then pause the ads and submit them now. By submitting them now they will be approved (Google reviews paused ads) so that you aren't trying to get ads approved at the last moment.
Put the dates in your calendar for each timeframe. When the date arrives, pause one ad and unpause the next one. If you don't want to try and remember to pause and unpause ads, you can create a different campaign for each timeframe and use the campaign start and end date feature.
Raise Your Frequency Caps
Lastly, raise your frequency caps. You have to be careful not to creep out your customers; however, during the holiday season, consumers are more accustomed to being bombarded with ads from every direction. Since their credit cards are sitting next to their keyboards, make sure you ad is there the next time they want to type those numbers into someone's shopping cart.
Put a reminder in your calendar to adjust your frequency cap downwards after the holiday to your typical levels.
The holidays are one of the most stressful times for people. We all want to give the perfect gift. We also want to find that perfect gift on sale. The only way for us to find the perfect gift on sale is to pay more attention to ads and offers during the holidays.
The further the holiday is away, the lower the stress levels; and the more willing we are to look for the perfect gift and deep discounts.
As the holidays approach, the stress levels increase; and the more we want to find 'good enough'; but we still want it on sale.
Segmentation in your marketing efforts is always essential. However, instead of segmenting your remarketing ads based upon site activity; segment your ads based upon the stress levels associated with a quickly approaching holiday.


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I express my deepest condolences
to the victims of the gunshots that
occurred in Christchurch, southern
New Zealand, on March 15.
The incident seems that there was
an antipathy feeling towards people
of immigration. But whatever the reason,
indiscriminate terrorism case that makes
a large number of victims to innocent
citizens, will never be forgiven.
From now on, it is necessary to
protect the living environment where
all citizens can live safely, and to
completely destroy the plans and
movements of madman and terrorists.
I wish the victims all the fortune from
my heart.
Alam Iwadate
Alam Communication
Alam Communication
New Zealand Embassey


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Maximal Anxiety
By Ivan KreilkampJune 27, 2014
Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
THE NEW YORKER'S editor David Remnick has dubbed Roz Chast "the magazine's only certifiable genius," but to some of the magazine's readers, she is just another cartoonist in the stable of regulars — the one who sketches neurotic New Yorkers in absurdist scenes with scratchily handwritten captions. Chast's new graphic memoir, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, should help the unconverted better understand Remnick's effusive praise. The book — a memoir in words, drawings, and a few photographs — offers a very funny, very moving account of Chast's experience caring for her dying parents. It is a sometimes-harrowing memoir of a child's ambivalent relationship with difficult parents, and of the "painful, humiliating, long-lasting, complicated, and hideously expensive" travels they take together through the contemporary U.S. eldercare-medical complex.
We've always suspected that the children and parents in Chast's cartoons — neurotic, hypochondria-prone, cheap, mildly agoraphobic — had to be based on the author's own family. In Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Chast for the first time narrates in detail the story of her 1950s–60s "Deep Brooklyn" upbringing as the only child of Elizabeth and George Chast, schoolteacher children of Russian Jewish immigrants: "I was quite aware that my parents had had tough times — way, way tougher than mine . . . Between their one-bad-thing-after-another lives and the Depression, World War II, and the Holocaust, in which they'd both lost family — it was amazing that they weren't crazier than they were." With her characteristic drawings, fleshed out with additional documentation (including actual photographs of the contents of her parents' closets, and poems written by her mother in the hospital), Chast attempts to explain how they all got as crazy as they were, especially in those last few years together. A rave endorsement from Alison Bechdel, author of the comparably-titled Are You My Mother?, adorns the back of Chast's book. Bechdel's example may have suggested one path for how a cartoonist might successfully become a graphic novelist/memoirist. The timing seems right for Chast, who was inducted as a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013, and whose reliable brilliance in a relatively low-status medium has been taken for granted.
Chast belongs with Woody Allen and Philip Roth in the ranks of the key forgers of our image of the neurotic late 20th-century Jewish New Yorker. Her memoir makes explicit what is implicit in the cartoons — that her characters' debilitating anxieties are historically rooted in their identities as the descendants of European Jewish immigrants, left borderline-nutcase by family histories of displacement, pogroms, and concentration camps. Not "survivors" or immigrants themselves, they cannot claim the gravitas that belongs to their parents' generation, but are left with un-heroic, minor, second-order emotional baggage. In Chast's comic entitled "Mental Baggage Claim," travelers looking for their suitcases at the airport observe: "Excuse me, I believe I see my resentment of physical beauty;" "Oh, there's my hypochondria coming out right now."
Elizabeth and George emerge here as the primal sources of Chast's own mental baggage. She depicts her father as maddening, but "kind and sensitive." "He knew that my mother had a terrible temper, and that she could be overpowering. She had a thick skin. He, like me, did not. She often accused my father of 'walking around with his feelers out.'" Here Chast offers a brilliant sketch of her father that depicts him at once as a prototypical Chast middle-aged man, of the sort familiar from her comics, but imbued with a deeply felt sympathy and sadness. George is balding, with stringy, electrically curled brown hair hard to distinguish from Chast's ubiquitous anxiety lines, scribbled graphic curls that she uses to signify both movement and psychological stress. The downturned, unhappy frown of his mouth and the etched lines on his forehead and around his eyes and mouth all possess the same graphic tremor, suggesting near-panic emotions that cannot be stilled or calmed. Chast's quavery lines recall those of Charles M. Shultz — think of the way Shultz's energy lines, when Lucy pulls away the football, visually echo the few waving strands of hair emerging from Charlie Brown's bald head as he flies through the air. Thought bubbles emerge from George's head: "Why did X say that?" "Was that an insult?" "Y hates me." In a Kafkaesque addition, Chast has literalized George's emotional "feelers" in the form of long, yellow insect antennae emerging from his head that tremble and emit buzzing warning signals. George is not simply anxious and sensitive; he has become a fantastical being designed for maximal anxiety, his sensorium molded for damagingly acute perception of any possible slight or emotional risk.
"Codependent? Of course we're codependent," Chast quotes her mother saying of her father, who chimes in, "Thank God!" "They were a tight little unit," Chast comments. "Aside from WWII, work, illness, and going to the bathroom, they did everything together." As a child, Chast felt claustrophobically trapped within her parents' lives, and kept herself at a certain distance from them once she left home, although she also sometimes wished for an intimacy with them she could not experience (especially with her mother). In the last few years of their lives, their physical deterioration brings Chast home. "[N]ow I was back. I didn't particularly like it, and they probably didn't either. Still, aside from running away from the whole situation . . . I didn't see a way out." This comment accompanies an image of Chast sitting between her parents on a doily-festooned couch, with a sign pointing to her head: "You are here. Suck it up."
The book begins with a photo of the toddler Roz with her parents — an earlier daughter had died after childbirth — and then turns to a full-page strip narrating the state of equilibrium and denial in which the story begins. Roz makes one lame attempt to open a conversation about end-of-life plans with her parents, who pretend they have no idea what she's talking about. The strip ends with a split panel showing both Roz and her parents separately sighing in relief that they managed to avoid the Talk. Next, in a chapter titled "The Beginning of the End," Roz explains how it started to become clear that her 90-something parents "were slowly leaving the sphere of TV commercial old age — Spry! Totally independent! Just like a normal adult, but with silver hair! — and moving into the part of old age that was scarier, harder to talk about, and thus not a part of this culture. Something Was Coming Down the Pike." The rest of the book unflinchingly details the events leading to her parents' leaving their Brooklyn apartment, where they'd lived for 48 years, for a ruinously expensive eldercare facility near Chast's Connecticut home; her mother's accidental fall and hospitalization; her father's increasing senile dementia prior to his death; and her mother's extended decline, with hospice care, before her own eventual passing.
One needs no particular interest in Chast's previous work to appreciate Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? But for a longtime Chast fan, the book seems to offer a key to her previous, less explicitly autobiographical comics.
One example is a coinage of Chast's mother's: that of a "conspiracy of inanimate objects." The phrase captures the sense of a world of banal yet strange things, defining us and making claims on us. The very first cartoon Chast published in The New Yorker in 1978 — reproduced, as are all of those discussed here, in Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, & Health-Inspected Cartoons by Roz Chast, 1978 –2006 — nicely evokes this abiding obsession. In some respects, this 1978 cartoon does not yet quite look like a Chast. The ink lettering and the drawings are slightly too firm and decided, lacking the neurotic scratchy quality that became her signature. Entitled "Little Things," it illustrates a range of invented, absurd objects: "chent," "spak," "redge," "bie, "enker," and so on, some looking vaguely like mathematical symbols, some like broken-off pieces of something that you might find in the back of a kitchen drawer.
Chast's subsequent work overflows with "little things," banal junk or detritus, often depicted via an almost anthropological gaze, as of an outsider considering the mysterious and melancholy remains of a vanished civilization. A comic called "Proof of Life on Earth" features, in its dossier, "Last week's issue of a TV magazine," "Cousin Jimmy's intramural basketball-playoff trophy," "Pocket lint," "Notebooks galore," and finally a "Sworn statement from a notary public" that affirms, "This hereby certifies that [scribbled name] is actually here on this very planet." The joke implies a back-story of a philosophically inclined child who is deeply puzzled to find herself in this strange family, in this random neighborhood, on this planet.
Things for Chast are generally out of place or obsolete. They bear information that is likely no longer relevant and impossible now fully to interpret, and they are embedded in networks of commerce that are equally mysterious and confounding. One recurring motif concerns New York's inexplicable shops, as in "M + O Typewriter Supplies" (part of the cartoon "Stores of Mystery"): "This place has been closed whenever one has walked past it. However, it's always there, meaning somebody is continuing to pay rent on it. Why?" The window display contains a single decrepit and cobweb-festooned typewriter. One imagines the young Chast, walking the streets of 1960s Brooklyn, pondering the bizarre ways our systems of commerce produce meaningless junk. In a 1990 New Yorker cover, Chast depicts an archaeological chart of the supposed fourteen layers of detritus existing under New York City. Entire layers are devoted to "Lost Cat Toys" — mangy-looking mice, birds, felt balls — to "Mail That Never Got Through," and to "Bell-bottoms, platform shoes, & peace medallions." (Remember, this was 1990, not long after the 1970s.) The ninth layer is "Misplaced Important Papers," including a will, tickets, receipts, an invitation, a new computer's instructions, and "several bankbooks."
These lost bankbooks are revealed, in Can't We Talk, as crucial, psychologically freighted items in the actual Chast household. After Elizabeth is hospitalized following a fall from a stepladder — she was trying to locate an unneeded document she believed was hidden somewhere deep in what the family called the Crazy Closet — the increasingly senile and forgetful George temporarily moves in with his daughter's family in Connecticut. "The nonstop chatter was annoying, but what really drove me over the edge was his paranoia about THE BANKBOOKS." These "were a collection of uncanceled bankbooks dating back to at least the 1960s," "many of them . . . from banks that didn't even exist anymore." George becomes frantic with worry that they will be stolen. He becomes so irrepressible in his obsession that Chast makes a sign reading "No Bankbook Talk" that she holds up whenever he broaches the topic. The bankbook obsession exemplifies a wider range of neurotic behavior by George and Elizabeth, who have responded to personal and family traumas with obsessive rigidity, unchanging routine, and semi-pathological hoarding.
Halfway through the narrative, Chast has successfully pried her ailing parents from their apartment, leaving her to begin "the massive, deeply weird, and heartbreaking job of going through my parents' possessions: almost fifty years' worth, crammed into four rooms." She is disappointed but not surprised to find that "there was no buried treasure . . . It was pretty much dusty old junk," the majority of which she ends up leaving for the building's super to sell or throw out. "But it was our junk, and the thought of never seeing any of it was troubling. So I took some photos." Here, Chast offers ten pages of actual photographs, lightly annotated: "Museum of old Schick shavers" (one of them bound up in duct tape); "So-o-o-o-o many pencils!!!!!"; "Why was there a drawer of jar lids?"; "My old bed. Also, the filing cabinet — the bankbooks were in the back of the top drawer!!!"
Chast's previous work had accumulated motifs of junk, mysterious objects, and quasi-ethnographic investigations into the habits of "natives" who usually seemed to be versions of the Chasts themselves and their neighbors, evoking a cargo cult mythology of lost Brooklyn, a strange society organized around and knowable by its obsolete stuff. The most perfect example is a one-page comic called "The Lost Tribe," in which a bearded explorer in a pith helmet, obviously Roz herself, discovers "a lost tribe . . . clearly human but untouched by modern civilization . . . We communicate as best we can." This tribe consists of Roz's parents in their Brooklyn apartment — drawn indistinguishably from their representation in the memoir, getting by with their "primitive tools" (manual can opener, non-cable TV, rotary phone). In another cartoon about the "Tournament of Neuroses Parade," we see a middle-aged man seated between a formidable-looking older couple: "The 'I Never Really Broke Away from My Parents' Float." Chast did eventually break away. But her parents' decline demanded a "Return to the Fold" (a chapter title), and eventually a series of decisions about what to do with them and their things. She must outwit the conspiracy of inanimate objects, and discover how to care for her parents without taking on their neuroses and, almost as threatening, their accumulated stuff.
Can't We Talk offers a new interpretive frame for many of her classic comics from the past several decades. For example, a small black and white comic that seems to be from the late 1980s considers "Why One's Parents Got Married." Options include "An alien civilization threatened to blow up the planet unless the two were wed" (featuring an angry-looking robot muttering imprecations) and "They were, in fact, for a brief time, the only man and woman on Earth, except for a nearby justice of the peace." Chast seems torn between a recognition that her parents were so perfect for one another that they could barely function when separated, and a feeling that George and Elizabeth are so different from her as to seem members of some exotic race with whom she can only "communicate as best [she] can," and whose marriage will always remain opaque.
Or consider a page of "Healing Truths Mother's Day Cards." One reads: "To a Dear Person on Mother's Day. You did the best with the skills you had. / Considering everything, you weren't so bad. / I'll try not to repeat your mistakes." With no self-pity, Chast gradually reveals in the memoir that she was left as a child in the care of "maids" (actually European exchange students) who sometimes hit her and locked her in the closet, leaving her with lifelong claustrophobia; that she was, for years, not permitted to eat lunch with the other children at school, but was humiliatingly required to be walked home by one of these "maids" to eat there alone; that her mother terrified her and her father with her rages, and at least once, when she'd gotten lost in a department store at around age four, hit her in a fury.
Chast vows to be a different kind of mother to her own children, and in the final pages of the book, she writes, "I'm still working things out with my mother. Sometimes, I want to go back in time and warn her, 'Don't do that! If you're mean to her (me) again, you'll lose her trust forever! It's not worth it!!!' Obviously, I can't." Can't We Talk ends movingly with a series of delicate pen and ink sketches Chast made of her mother in the hours just following her death in August 2009, and finally, an Epilogue in which she depicts the temporary spot she has made for her parents' ashes in her own reasonably well-ordered clothes closet. "Maybe when I completely give up this desire to make it right with my mother, I'll know what to do with their cremains. Or maybe not."
LARB Contributor
Ivan Kreilkamp teaches in the Department of English at Indiana University. He has published three books, most recently Minor Creatures: Persons, Animals, and the Victorian Novel (Chicago UP, 2018) and A Visit From the Goon Squad Reread (Columbia UP, 2021). He has also published widely on contemporary fiction, film, animals, and pop music in Public Books, The New Yorker online, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Republic, The Point, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, and elsewhere.
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The great thing about music is that there is a song for every emotion or situation that life has to offer. Music can accompany your happiest moments, the craziest partiest, and even the most traumatizing break ups. There's such a variety of break up songs available, you may never have to open your mouth. Sit your soon to be ex down, turn on the iPod and walk out the door. Here are some suggestions as you make your exit.